Indulge me, if you will, in a thought experiment. I say indulge me, but you already read this, for which I’m very thankful for and is an indulgence in itself, really. But after a podium in Monaco, I was thinking about the future of Lewis Hamilton and what happens after he leaves Ferrari. There isn’t much more for Hamilton to achieve, hitting an eighth podium in Monaco, tying his idol Ayrton Senna.

You can’t be a seven-time World Champion without amazing levels of resilience, and however bad his time at Ferrari would be, if he stayed in the sport after the 2021 season, there was no way he was going to walk away. 

But everything eventually has to come to an end, and after entering, and later defining Formula 1, the next thing has to be entering Hamilton’s mind. A seemingly hard launch of his relationship with Kim Kardashian part of his 19th Monaco weekend, Hamilton has been at the forefront of the sport from a sporting and cultural perspective.

And before we get into who might replace Hamilton at Ferrari, a short sports marketing lesson. Without getting into my day job too much, one way sports teams grow is by inviting celebrities to the grid. Come get a few photos at the race, post some pictures for Instagram with the right hashtags and the idea is some of your audience will follow your sports team too.

Here’s Haas and Karen Gillan to prove my point.

In most cases, the league itself can ignore it. They might put you into a gallery at the end of the weekend but you won’t be the main event because the sport is bigger than your celebrity. However, when you’re Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, the sport wants your involvement because the sport benefits from your presence. There is a vanishingly small number of famous people that this applies to.

That’s why F1 is Keeping up with the Kardashians. To paraphrase a wise woman, I can teach you, but I have to charge (whatever my day rate is).

Back to Lewis. 

If he was to step away, I wanted to look at who might be next. The choice you’re already replying with is already on the grid.

This is the consensus pick. Bearman has driven a Ferrari before, finishing seventh in Saudi Arabia, deputising for a hospitalised Carlos Sainz. Bearman is a confident driver, happy to mix it up with others without being reckless. For Ferrari and 2027, he is still somewhat raw, but Haas should knock off the rest of the rough edges, including a growing rivalry with Esteban Ocon.

He needs a statement result still to really make the rest of the F1 world sit up and notice Bearman, but on his current trajectory, I don’t think it would be a shock to see him trading Haas white for Ferrari red.

Another in-house pick. This could be Ferrari’s Oscar Piastri, having a driver win the F3 title and win the F2 title on the way to an F1 drive. However, Ferrari doesn’t do rookies. I cannot name one full-time rookie who started at Ferrari, and even looking enviously at Kimi Antonelli probably won’t make Ferrari change their mind. Camara could conceivably end up being Bearman’s replacement at Haas, placed there by Ferrari, but a jump straight to the big team is probably one step too far.

In Monaco, he had a disastrous Sunday after leading the F2 feature race and pitting, only to find himself skating across Sainte Dévote and out of the race. A real missed opportunity for him and Invicta.

If you are an F1 driver, the chances are you live in Monaco. If you are the Monaco equivalent of Ocado driver, your route is going to include some of the richest people in the world (spoiler, they all want protein powder). The zero-tax, endless sunshine and proximity to France, Italy and Spain is a huge draw. But let’s face it, it’s probably the tax. (A hello to JP Morgan, where that link goes to, and why an F1 blog is giving them traffic.)

Unless of course, you’re French. French nationals are not allowed to benefit from the unique tax arrangements, so there is less incentive to live there. Completely separately from that, Pierre Gasly lives in Milan. Gasly beats Bearman for experience, beats him for results, and had a short spell at a top team when he was at Red Bull. 

Gasly would both be a surprise and not a surprise if he was to replace Hamilton at Ferrari, and would also for Alpine, complete their de-Frenchification, losing Ocon and then Renault, as they become more of a global team.

First of all, I considered George Russell here. A disgruntled driver whose issues we’ve talked about previously, moving to Mercedes too late and now being usurped by the shiny bright new thing he was meant to be. But I just can’t see Russell in a Ferrari. I think if anything, if suddenly there is no vacant seat at Mercedes, Russell could head back to a revitalised Williams.

Which means there would need to be a seat there. Sainz was unceremoniously left as the odd man out when Ferrari signed Hamilton in the first place, latching on to Williams, who have not adapted perhaps as well as they could to this regulation set. So if a big red lifeboat was to suddenly reappear, perhaps Sainz and Leclerc could be reunited.

It’s a 66-point gap to Lewis Hamilton for Kimi Antonelli. The young Italian has won five races in a row, a standout achievement in any season, but especially this one with the new regulations. Mercedes have got it right, Antonelli has got it right. Euro Summer takes us next to to Barcelona, for what is probably the last F1 race there for the foreseeable future to be replaced by the Madring, which is also this year.

For fans of symbolism, Kimi Antonelli winning while the ghost of Mercedes past was next to him on the podium definitely felt like there was more to it. In previous years, F1 has thrived. Through Drive to Survive, we’ve seen Rivalries Thrive (sorry). But this year, while Kimi Antonelli is the standout driver at the front, Hamilton is only one of a chasing pack for second. This season is starting to look like the perfect storm for Antonelli, and the lack of a standout rival means this title could be decided very quickly indeed.

No idea who this is, but this run across the pit lane looked exceptionally dangerous.

Driver ratings are out for F1’26

More Tifos at the F1, please

All the headlines in 2026 are video game references.

When I was growing up, you could only have two people playing on the console at once. UNLESS you had a multi-tap, controllers, and friends. The last one always caught me out. Ahem. But, this was a piece of tech that changed multi-player games, and then some games put them directly on the cartridge. Video is on how to set them up.